Quote from: blablahblah on February 14, 2014, 02:32:24 PM

Open-minded people, feel free to read those responses here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=457105.0

Readers can find my rebuttal to you at your thread (linked above).

The one point he made that I think is worthy of responding to here, is the often heard assertion that PoW wastes electricity for nothing.

(Orders-of-magnitude more electricity will be wasted if I am correct that non-PoW systems such as PoS put us right back at fiat again.)

Even in the worst possible case if the entire value of all new coins was burned as electricity with no profit to miners thus providing no utility for redistribution to deconcentrate wealth, still we need to burn some resources to keep the block chain decentralized. Else someone needs to refute my assertion that non-PoW schemes are not sufficiently decentralized to not end up being fiat again. (and see below how much electricity fiat societies waste because government capture allows debt to run amok)

I wonder if readers have comprehended my upthread posts wherein I explained that democracy = fiat. We can't eliminate fiat if we retain voting (tallied by and to create a top-down authority) and reputation systems of control, because top-down control over money is the definition of fiat. A top-down controlled digital fiat can be technically secure, but the security is vacuous in the sense it is not protecting us from the power vacuum boogeyman that we were trying to eliminate in the first place. We might as well just continue to use Paypal, VISA, and Mastercard.

And even in that improbable worst case where miners earn no profit, we gain the utility of distributing new virgin coins anonymously. This is for example a way that people trapped behind totalitarian borders can generate coin from within. It is a way for individuals to convert fiat cash into anonymous coin, by spending the fiat for PC hardware instead of via an exchange.

If we assume miners are making some profit (i.e. not worst case), then we also gain the utility of deconcentrating wealth. If we don't deconcentrate wealth then wealth will concentrate until the velocity of money collapses (as it has by 50% since 2008 while Gini coefficients are skyrocketing globally), then welcome to potentially another feudal Dark Age.

With cpu-only mining, I envision that economies-of-scale with huge rigs located in cooled data centers will earn less ROI than carting some PCs to a stream and running microhydropower, because I estimate the by-far lowest cost energy (micro-hydropower) will outweigh the very minimal cost-scaling advantages of a tower of PCs. Thus I see the (small, reasonable, annual rate of new coins or Freicoin's demurrage) redistribution of wealth going to the smaller guys with the most initiative, who are driving new technologies for harvesting renewable energy, i.e. the antithesis of waste.

And who says that when I drive an hour to work this is waste. It isn't wasteful if being there instead of here, is more efficient in terms of the face-to-face interaction and production achieved at work.

It is far more wasteful for a human mind to sit idle. The energy that the human mind can devise ways to more efficiently harvest isn't factored in by those who think human activity is wasteful. These (idiot, broken-record, never been correct every in history) Malthusians annoy the fuck out of me. It is as if they can't fathom that the human mind is capable of producing more energy than humans consume. Duh!

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/02/13/global-warming-why-it-is-nonsense/

Quote from: AnonyMint on February 13, 2014, 06:32:05 AM

Quote from: bitfreak! on February 13, 2014, 05:38:04 AM

Quote from: AnonyMint on February 13, 2014, 05:08:16 AM

It is impossible to have a finite supply of anything without a top-down controller stealing the thing.

Why, explain to me the exact reason why that would be true.

I already did. Because there is nothing finite. The Second Law of Thermodynamics assures us the trend of entropy is always towards maximum. You just try to find one finite bound of anything in the universe. You won't be able to find it. Even if you count the number of a certain species, you can't guarantee with 100% certainty it will remain less than some bound (e.g. changes that you can't predict such finding another planet which can host).

http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#2nd_Law_of_Thermo

Human activity can be egregiously wasteful when it is top-down funded by debt (usury), because the lenders don't care if you default, because there is a central bank to bail out the banksters and socialize the costs of the wasteful investment. We have $150 trillion of debt in this world today. That is the waste Malthusians see (e.g. people who didn't earn it, doing debt-driven strip-mall-mayonnaise conspicuous consumption and adding no productive knowledge) but they misapply that observation to all forms of human activity. What needs to be removed is not all human activity, rather the top-down power vacuum (i.e. lack of decentralization) that enables the socialism and the wealthy to over concentrate wealth with usury backed by socialism.

An economics thought experiment. Lets assume we possessed an oilfield that can pump out new oil for $5 per bbl in total costs including amortization of the capital infrastructure. Lets assume we can pump out at a higher rate than demand. What happens to the price of oil? It drops to $5 so that we stop pumping oil at a faster rate than demand.

You see aggregate (non-debt-driven) demand for energy is never wasteful, because by definition it costs less to produce energy than it is worth. That is unless you believe some (Rothschild-funded top-down generated propaganda) Malthusian nonsense such as Peak Oil or Global Warming which tries to fool you into believing that anything in this universe is finite. Please define the edge of the universe? I did.

Widespread debt can cause humans to take on uneconomic activities which are not based on knowledge and maximization of profit. That would then be wasteful, and it would be reflected in demand exhausting supply. This is why Rome collapsed.

Quote from: AnonyMint on February 12, 2014, 03:35:24 PM

Quote from: Misesian on February 12, 2014, 12:08:39 PM

Also didn't the Romans suffer from inflation when they diluted the silver content of their coins in 3rd century to fund the wars and bloated Roman government.

There was only a very brief hyperinflation of silver in Rome in 3rd century as you will see on the silver price chart. That chart cost Armstrong $21 million to produce.

Rather major core governments never go willingly to destroy their power. Instead they do what ever is necessary to maintain it. You did not read all the hyperinflation links I already gave you as follows.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/03/17/what-are-the-odds-the-us-defaults/
http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/01/28/here-we-go-again-hypreinflation/

Quote from: Martin Armstrong

I really do not understand why people insist that HYPERINFLATION must take place. That ASSUMES government will print to meet its unfunded obligations rather than just change laws and fail to meet promises. They are cutting entitlements already. Yes Rome debased its currency to the point that its worth was 1/50th of its former value. However, the system devolved into a TWO-TIER monetary system where they refused to accept their own currency in return for taxes. Taxes were imposed in kind so they just came and took stuff. In terms of gold, the tax was by weight not by coin so you have tax-collector gold bars that have survived.

Everything is NOT fair and orderly. One of the reasons there was the invention of paper money in the American Colonies is because there was a shortage of coins. Britain insisted anything Americans purchased they had to pay in silver or gold. But what the British purchased from America they paid in copper.

Quote from: Misesian on February 12, 2014, 12:08:39 PM

Wasn't this the reason for the fall of the Roman Empire?

No. It was debt that misallocated all the resources, just as we have now with $150 trillion in global debt, i.e. $25,000 per human including babies, elderly and billions of poor earning less than $10 per day (how can they pay their $25,000 share!).

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4946&cpage=1#comment-402900

Quote from: JustSaying a.k.a. AnonyMint

@Winter:
You attempt to remove blame from the effects of top-down governance. Agriculture in Western Europe declined for numerous reasons all of which can be attributed to mismanagement due to top-down control and the funding of such misallocation. Socialized debt is a future tax. The agricultural sector was suffering under increasing taxes after the hyperinflation of the 3rd century had adversely impacted funding for the military while there were increasing military threats to the east. Pottery records indicate production increased through the 4th, as the rural sector was squeezed for every drop by Rome. As with all debt funding, growth was too rapid, and irrigation was polluted by clearing for too many new settlements. The resultant malnutrition, declining production, localized warlords, and thus disease coincided with the collapse of Western Europe due to the bankruptcy of its top-down militarized, servitude model.

We will likely find the same top-down cause applies to of all Dark Ages even the famines in Africa.